The prognosis for “NY Med” is quite good, despite a few complications. Pronounced dead by ABC after a critically acclaimed, ratings-starved first season in 2012, diehard fans sought a second opinion. They wanted it back, and the alphabet network finally obliges by resuscitating the real-life hospital drama for an eight-week run starting at 10 tonight on WCVB, Channel 5.

But it’s a somewhat diluted version in which every case results in a positive outcome. Apparently, the Grim Reaper, like most working slobs, has taken a summer vacation. So much for the suspense, yet the series remains imminently watchable.

Featuring Milton native Diana Costine, whose personable nursing skills made her a fan favorite two years ago, the hour-long show remains a riveting, behind-the-operating-room-doors look at life in the ER at a handful of Big Apple hospitals. It also offers an intriguing socio-economic lesson, as the action oscillates between upscale facilities in Manhattan’s wealthiest sections and an over-stressed public hospital across the Hudson in Newark.

Like before, each episode focuses on three or four cases, the majority of which involve either cancer or heart disease.

Mixed in are bits of comic relief, along with up-close-and-personal looks at the featured nurses and doctors, including TV favorite, Mehmet Oz, a practicing heart surgeon at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital. He’s a bona fide star, but on “NY Med” he’s repeatedly overshadowed by unknowns like urologist Ashley Winter, a 28-year-old beauty who spends her off-hours partying in extremely short dresses and work days (up at 4 a.m.) counseling men twice her age on the ups and downs of erectile dysfunction.

She’s a keeper, as is the equally young and equally lovely Costine, who is not only a nurse; (in Episode 2) she’s also a patient. Despite her tender years, doctors recommend inserting a pacemaker to correct an irregular heartbeat. Without it, they fear she could die if she strikes her head on something during the black-outs triggered by her condition.

Her story is uplifting, but it’s a shame we’re made privy only to the surgery, not her recovery, which would have been fun to see how a nurse responds to being on the other side of the bed rail.

Perhaps we’ll be treated to that experience in Episode 7 (not made available for review), when Costine must cater to fellow ER nurse, Marina, after the latter is injured in a car crash.

Even when she is not featured, Costine remains a warm and welcome presence, like when she tends to an eccentric elderly widow stuck in the ER for hours. Their exchange is as adorable as it is funny, with the woman lamenting that she’ll never find another man as long as Costine is her competition.

Page 2 of 2 - Light moments like that are regular respites from the intense drama inhabiting the rest of the hour. You suspect every patient will pull through, but each case is shot and edited in a way to generate optimum suspense, like when a 2-year-old is rushed back into the OR after her developing a potentially fatal complication after surgery.

Still, as sad as it would be, a bit of bad news might do the show some good. Seeing how a doctor reacts to losing a patient would be fascinating. As close as the show comes to dabbling in such grief is when a patient suffers a miscarriage and her attending physician, Debbie Yi (yet another beauty; obviously a prerequisite), confides that she, too, lost her unborn child two weeks earlier.

By far, the most interesting of the docs is Hugo Razo, a young, hunky Latino who is as dedicated as they come, and has the patience to deal with the scores of violent patients who enter his Newark ER, usually in handcuffs and with a police escort.

Yet it’s an uncooperative elder gent who lands the biggest punch. Razo’s resistance to the urge to strike back is amazing.

Sure, he’s playing for the camera, as all the pros here are to some degree, but his cool in that tense moment is truly inspiring.

More of Hugo certainly would be preferable to Oz, who’s almost as big a ham as the Broadway actor he treats for a ruptured aorta in Episode 1. Talk about playing to the camera!

Oz also pops up in Episode 4, easily the best of the six made available for review. In it, Oz is both a patient (he broke a finger playing basketball) and a doctor trying to get to the bottom of what caused a seemingly healthy gentle-giant of a motorcycle cop to suddenly suffer a stroke.

The resulting operation, performed (in Oz’s place) by ace cardiac surgeon Allan Stewart, is definitely not for the queasy or faint of heart. The rest of the episode is equally strong, with the still wet-behind-her-ears Dr. Winter dealing with her first potentially terminal case, a sweet, loving man with advanced bladder cancer; and Dr. Ziad Sifri rushing to save the life of a 19-year-old student pilot who miraculously survived a plane crash that instantly killed his instructor.

The entire series, created by the award-winning producer Terence Wrong (“Boston Med,” “Boston 24/7”), is loaded with such cases, including a 19-year-old New Jersey lad who somehow made it through Marine boot camp with an acutely diseased heart, and a son who gives his mother “the gift of life” as a thank you for giving birth to him.

Each tale is guaranteed to bring a tear to the eye, not to mention a heightened respect for medical professionals blessed with superhuman skills that enable them to extend life in the face of death. Now it’s up to viewers to do the same for them, or at least their fledgling TV careers. Like stubborn men, you can’t force viewers to see a doctor, but a visit to “NY Med” can’t help but do you well. It’s the perfect antidote to what ails summer TV.